Editor’s Note: AI Edge: ‘Real’ Imagination

A little more than 25 years ago, my grandmother casually remarked that she wished she could see my aunts while talking to them on the telephone. For my grandmother, whose generation saw many impossibles turning into “possibles” and then into necessities, such as the telephone, the refrigerator and the television, anything was possible.

Only a few years after she passed away in 1999, video calls became a reality with the advent of the Internet in India. Sometimes I wonder if it was an idea borne out of her yearning to be close to her loved ones at all times, a mere intuition, a sort of a prediction or just the flow of human imagination, a powerful tool that has been harnessed by scientists and researchers over centuries to stumble upon new findings, from the telephone to the motor car to the airplane to artificial intelligence (AI) now.

Each time I am in a video call now, I am reminded of that profound imagination that became a reality. Perhaps, another grandmother somewhere had imagined and wished for a mobile phone, or the comfort of shopping from home, or to have an assistant who could do your bidding at all times. All those imaginings are now a part of everyday lives with our smartphones loaded with multiple apps and virtual assistants turning on even when you don’t want them to. Technology and AI have surreptitiously invaded our daily lives at home as well as at work in multiple ways.

So, someone somewhere always knows what we did, where we went, ate or slept, how much we walked, who did we talk to, maybe even what we talked about or thought. Our lives are not private anymore (though how many of us do want to keep it private is questionable given the blow-by-blow logs of lives that we see on the social media). The science fiction writings and movies only add to the sense of alarm on how AI can change our lives—whether it’s about eating up jobs or a complete takeover of the human race.

But not everything is so bad about it after all. Handle it smartly and work with it, and it has the potential to boost the quality of life and work.

So when our creative director, Anjan Das, told me that the Outlook Money cover turned out the way it did (and it turned out to be brilliant) because he worked with AI using multiple and in-depth prompts, such as the depth of the colour, the level of embellishment, the angle of the fonts, among others, I was not surprised.

Similarly, our deputy editor, Kundan Kishore, used a data platform along with his knowledge and creativity to apply the right filters and sift through a mine of data to distil information that is truly useful to our readers who are regular investors in mutual funds or plan to enter the investing arena sooner than later.

In both cases, will AI eat away their jobs? The answer is no. It was only the specific skills these individuals possessed that helped show the path to AI and turn its abilities in the right direction. It is human imagination that has made AI possible, and it is human imagination that can guide it towards producing the best outcomes. The key is to handle it right to improve the quality of how we consume and present information and access services.